“Clearly this is something that is a threat to our sport and we are looking now at trialling new methods of detection that are less invasive, so you don’t have to take the bike apart, so we can check more bikes before the start,” Cookson said today.

“If it becomes necessary to check every single bike for every single rider for every single race and all the spare bikes as well then maybe we will have to do that. These are processes and procedures that we are considering very actively now.”

“This particular issue was taken seriously, especially by top riders, and was not dismissed as being isolated,” a part of the report read.

However, it was the discovery by UCI inspectors of a motor in the bike of 19-year-old racer Femke Van den Driessche at the world titles in Zolder last month that has put the issue firmly in the spotlight.

“The technology that we’re developing is quite economical, it’s not expensive and it’s easy to handle. It allows us, as we saw at the cyclo-cross world championships, to do a large number of bikes to see if there is anything suspicious and then to test the bikes where there is something suspicious.”

Cookson was speaking from stage two of the Tour of Qatar, which doubles as a test event for the 2016 UCI Road World Championships in Doha.

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